Rome is full of some of the world’s greatest historical and architectural treasures and, accordingly, has drawn visitors for hundreds of years. From crackpot gunmen with personal papist vendettas to the effete ether-soaked and pampered youth of 17th and 18th century Europe many people have made Rome a vital stop on their grand tours.
Arguably the cultural centrepiece of Roman splendour is the Colosseum. Over two millennia the site has hosted visitors and participants, both willing and unwilling, including zealous Christians and hungry lions, professional pugilists, hunting parties and entire zoos of wild beasts, japanese tourists in sun-hats and shitloads of wild cats.
A very fine print by Giovanni Battista Piranesi of the Colosseum, as it was used as shelter for the impoverished and unsavoury.
For much of its history the Colosseum had lain disused and visited only by the Roman peasants who made it into a huge shelter for the disaffected, the afore-mentioned ubiquitous cats and British gentry intent on appearing as learned as possible. After visiting the site Byron wrote some heady, turgid verse:
But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;
When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,
And the low night-breeze waves along the air
The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear,
Like laurels on the bald first Caesar’s head;
When the light shines serene but doth not glare,
Then in this magic circle raise the dead:
Heroes have trod this spot – ’tis on their dust ye tread.
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, (1818)
An Italian gent by the name of Domenico Panaroli, was able to look beyond the cat piss, rubble and disorientated Northern Europeans to see a unique biosphere.
Mr Panaroli, 1587-1657, was a physician (which could have meant anything in those days) and a herbalist (ditto). He produced a comprehensive catalogue of the Colosseum’s varied flora – The Plantarum Amphytheatralium Catalogus. A right riveting read that.
In producing hismeisterwerk Mr Panaroli realised that many of the plants were alien to Italy and were in fact from Northern Africa. The theory he developed, and which has not been effectively disproven, is that these plants originated from the animals that were brought from the colonies for the entertainment of citizens in the capital.
It is with some reticence that the Inquisition must point out that these animals did not ‘bring’ these seeds over per se. As tempting as it is to envisage lions bringing a little piece of home with them in a tiny fine goat-skin purse, planting them in their new home and then carefully tending the little seedlings, this is simply not what happened. The seeds were probably carried in the animals’ bedding or their food.
Bibliography
Amo, Amas, Amat… And All That, Harry Mount, Short Books, 2006
Site dedicated to rebuilding Rome in 3D through various historical phases
Nerone – tour guides
This article was posted on
Thursday, August 20th, 2009 at
01:52.
It is archived in Architecture, Culture, History and tagged Architecture, flavian amphitheatre, flora, gladiators, History, horticulture, il coliseo, Italy, pugilistitude, Rome, stadium.
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